


My lonely Veil walker

by namginspirit



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:54:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25840189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namginspirit/pseuds/namginspirit
Summary: After so much time alone in the Veil, Lavellan and his friends will make sure he will never feel lonely again. [Working on chapter 2]
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas
Kudos: 3
Collections: Dragon Age Fic, Dragon Age Inquisition





	My lonely Veil walker

**Author's Note:**

> [SPOILER ALERT]: This work is based on Solas' loyalty mission in the Exalted Plains.

The taciturn and melancholic feeling of the night sheltered him more than any daytime embrace that sunbeams could provide on his skin bathed in small pink dots that gave color to his cheeks. He walked along the battlements with a certain stoicism that gave him an appearance of calm in front of the guards who, standing on those walls, took care that no enemy, no matter how small, could approach the vicinity of the fortress at all. Solas walked with parsimony, enjoying each step as if it was the last one, and in little intervals of time closed his eyes subtly, taking advantage of those moments to breathe hard and fill his interior with the essence that flooded Skyhold. He always felt a certain fascination for everything around him, used to spend lapses and lapses of time reflecting on anything, living or inert, that crossed his view in any way. His travelling notebooks collected ancient ruins, anecdotes and stories of spirits wandering around leaving their mark on the boy’s heart. And it was precisely the existence of one of them that kept him awake that night. His feet led him unconsciously into the chambers of the only person who could help him in those circumstances.

He was aware that the situation was too complicated to add additional problems to all the preparations that had to be made in order not to succumb to the attacks of Corifeus. But Solas could not let a friend go, although deep down an irrational suspicion warned him that it was more than possible that no one would understand this need. How could he embrace the friendship of something intangible, immeasurable and sometimes even invisible? He abhorred the idea that only something contained by a physical body could be the object of compassion, but he also sought not to judge, sometimes unsuccessfully, all those who affirmed it out of the ignorance of someone who had never stepped on the Veil. His constant journeys into dreams had helped him acquire a wisdom that very few held throughout Thedas, and Cassandra knew it.  
“Worry, maybe I should have done something, pain, tear, insomnia. Where is it? Infinite restlessness, droopy eyes, tired eyelids”.

A boy with disembodied blond hair materialized in front of him, in a cloud of greenish hues that dissipated into the night air. Everyone was accustomed to Cole’s eccentricities, to hearing him vomit meaningless words in every corner and wander among the sick like someone who dodges traps in a minefield, defusing some and triggering others. It was also common to see him talking to the spiders that piled up among the empty bottles in the store, to which he brought small pieces of cheese, as if he was carefully making amends for his past actions in search of a redemption that few were willing to give him. They both fell out of the common mold everyone was in, despite the irony of using that denomination in a region of dark spawn, an empty golden throne, blood magic, Venatori and wardens angered by the red lyrium of which Varric had spoken so much.

“What do you want, Cole?”

“What do you want, Solas? I hear sorrow, heartbreak, a crying spirit, also affection, appreciation...”

“Cole, stop. I can’t. I can’t hear you say that”.

Solas' voice broke into a burst of visceral sound as he was speaking, dropping his body against the stone wall that stood behind him until he  
slide to the ground, where he sheltered his naked head between his knees. Cole knelt  
at his side, offering him all the support that his ignorance and bewilderment allowed him; he never would be able to understand others completely, and neither would they understand him. But both of them were able to understand each other in between their ignorance, and Solas needed a friend.

“I can help you find it. I want to help you find it”.

The elf lifted his head from the fortress he had created on his own legs and tilted his face looking for Cole’s. A tear escaped from his pointed eyes, colored by an amalgam of determination and rage that Cole did not remember since he saw Rhys and Evangeline for the last time. Solas nodded, accepting that genuine offer and wiped his eyes with the fabric of his shirt.

“ I suppose you have many questions “, he said.

“I know everything I need”

[...]

The next morning was wrapped in a frosty blanket, hand in hand with a stabbing wind that made all those who fell victims of small breezes that fiddled between their clothes shudder. Solas and Cole waited at the entrance of the fortress in a melancholic silence that the boy found difficult to understand: it was arduous to him to swallow all the sensations that galloped through his mind in a strong surf, like an erupting volcano that had to retain inside its lava. But he knew that it was peace what his friend needed the most in those moments, and he was willing to give it to him no matter what.

“Hey, Kid, you’re very quiet today. No cheese left in the pantry?” Varric’s jokes used to make Cole laugh, even though he didn’t understand a quarter of what he said. But at a time like that one, not even him, from his ignorance, was able to laugh. “Not even you found that funny, Chuckles?”

“Varric...”

Lavellan’s sweet voice warned him of the gloom of the situation, and Varric instantly understood that what stopped his jokes from making an effect was just that, circumstances. The white haired young woman approached Solas calmly, and after dedicating a look of understanding and affection that the opposite felt like a rising flame in his chest,  
made a determined gesture towards the entrance, and the four of them set off to the place on the map that had been pointed out the previous morning. The dark circles covered his white face with ash, and Lavellan’s eye skin seemed to have mimicked that in a gesture of inordinate empathy.

They had spent the twilight thinking of the thousand things that kept them away from the deep sleep they had been crying out since Haven succumbed the Corifeus attacks. But the responsibilities were so many and they were tied so strongly that they hadn’t even found a respite to exchange everything that was created in his soul after that non-existent kiss on the Veil. However, Lavellan knew that, in this new reality, she wasn’t the protagonist.

“Chuckles, is this the way” asked Varric, ready to lay hands on Bianca if needed. The uncertainty of not knowing the place made him think that any monster at any time could attack any of his friend.

“This way”, Cole answered quickly, and he began to make his way in that direction, as if it was a personal affront that he needed to settle.

It was such an heterogeneous group, assassins, magicians and rogues, two races and one spirit, different backgrounds and a wide range of discordant stories predicting nothing but absolute chaos. But they respected each other, and you could even say that, in their own way, they loved each other. Nobody more than them had come to respect Cole so much without understanding him, and that common connection had united them with an unbreakable strength that was reinforced in numerous disputes with other Inquisition members who opposed with fierce attitude to the boy’s stay inside its doors. Vivienne had been the first to be up in arms when Lavellan agreed to let him stay with them as an equal, and Solas had continued the affront by reminding her that also an apostate mage who frequented the Veil was living with them. Varric was not in that primal confrontation, but he always accompanied him in his morning tribulations, explaining where was everything that Cole required. "The daggers are more comfortable here," he had once said. Far from questioning the motivations that had led him to such a thing, he declared himself an accomplice of his innocent robberies, stealing some daggers from the armory making use of the sweet talk that "Andraste had awarded him as a prize for his immeasurable beauty".

They had been walking for at most an hour, but in Solas’s body every minute weighed like an asphalt dolmen on his back, and every second without finding his friend meant a  
hope that was diluted in the river that ran through the area splitting the land in half. But just when despair seemed to have made its home in his body, a cry, with a weak cadence, but a strong sound made his way between the stones and the animals that inhabited the forest. Cole had found them "pretty," and seemed sad as the animals felt fear caused by foreign presence, accustomed as they were to share the land only with Dalish clans.

“It’s over there!” The elf shouted impatiently, seconds before all his companions followed him in a visceral race to save a friend they hadn’t met.

The white complexion of Solas paled completely in a marble white as she gazed with her own eyes the demon that was trapped in the circle of summoning hidden between the stones.

“Do you have lyrium potions? We’re exhausted from fighting that demon...” Said the mage after approaching them. 

“He was a spirit of wisdom... You have corrupted him! You have corrupted him to summon this demon! My friend...” A wounded Solas said, between words of anger and sadness that stopped him from analyzing the situation clearly.

“I understand your confusion, believe me, but I’ve been one of the most important mages in the Circle of Kirkwall and...”

“Shut. Up”.

Even the firmest trees trembled at the display of fury of such a usually quite soul like his.

“You forced him to obey and then ordered him to kill. It was then when it was transformed. We have to break the circle of invocation. Please, Inquisitor”.

His begging orbs provoked in Lavellan a stupor that only allowed her to nod with her head as she went to the granite pillars that held the body of his once benevolent friend. One by one, among cries of pain, war, and blood, they were destroyed in front of the group of mages who had committed by ignorance and selfishness a spiritual crime that could only be ended with the rupture of a genuine friendship. Solas fell to the ground, exhausted, face down on the grass that grew free on the banks of the river, asking for forgiveness for not having protected the bond between him and his friend.

“Lethallin, ir abelas…”

He began to whisper in front of everyone in a conversation that resembled one between the executioner and his victim, although he was, in a certain way, also their savior. The spirit, which was now slowly dissipating with every breeze, replied in a perfect elvish that only Lavellan was able to understand. "Ma nuvenin" were the last words he uttered like daggers that were stuck in his throat before raising his hands to make the figure of his friend disappear completely. Soon, there was no demon, but neither spirit. Solas rose with determination, and turned his gaze to the little group of mages who had contemplated the scene completely motionless.  
With the pain that the loss of a loved one causes, he raised his hand with willing to reach his cane and close with deadly vengeance the cycle of injustices. They had captured and tortured his friend, and not even he, who knew all the ins and outs of the Veil, was able to let his feelings go for once. Just his name pronounced under Lavellan’s lips was able to stop him, giving the mages a chance to escape from the blood-fanged werewolf beast that had seized the eyes of her partner and lover.

Not even Varric was able to lift the spirits of a group that had just witnessed the ravages of magic when it’s misused. Lavellan, meanwhile, walked mathematically, fixing her gaze on the stones of the road without being able to lift her eyes from the ground. And Cole, who cared to understand the magnitude of such actions, retained again all emotional traces that Lavellan’s thoughts were drawing on his mental map. Aware of her sorrow, he reached her to put his hand on her shoulder as he had seen the others do many times like a silent support sign. And in his head, meanwhile,"pain, loved one, worry, fear of losing, innocent tears of love, grief, mourning, fear, a lot of fear".

The night was also silent. As it was becoming already a tradition for him, again, Solas was not able to sleep a wink. Guilt flooded him from the inside, and anger kept him awake no matter how firmly he closed his eyes, trying to find the calm he usually had. He knew that the night would be another internal struggle from which he could not escape without a hand that could offer him a way out, or at least an easier way to walk. It was painful to struggle with grief and loneliness at the same time, but he was accustomed to not being understood. An apostate mage, Veil walker and friend of spirits was not worthy to earn the sympathy of more than half of the inhabitants of Thedas. But there was someone who  
would always understand him even without understanding him. And Solas had been alone for too long. He couldn’t help but think of the pain felt by that innocent spirit that was forced to fight, used by cruel humans as a shield against bandits. He hated the idea that blood magic was such a taboo for certain individuals just because it harmed those who performed it, or innocent victims of these blood spells, but not because it could also disturb the spirits. Those sad, misunderstood souls who wandered around the Veil granting him the honor of hearing some of the most interesting and beautiful stories he had ever heard. He certainly believed that one night in the Veil would change the opinion of many, while others would go completely mad. But it was that helplessness of not being able to make straight and square minds understand the importance of respecting everyone, and also the spirits, what kept him awake. He was grateful that at least Cole was safe. After all, he was a mage and also an elf, he knew that no one would listen to what he had to say. It was a lost war before it began.

He left the dim light of his room amid tribulations and thoughts, leaving behind the reflections of the candles on the paintings with which he had customized the walls of the room. The studio was welcoming, but he needed to escape from that loneliness that seemed to attack him again, even if he was not alone. The door to Lavellan’s chambers was locked tight, but he was sure she was not able to sleep either.

He knocked softly one, two, and three times, and when he seemed about to set course back to his room, repentant for the boldness of the visit, the shrill sound of old hinges startled him and made him turn around to see a welcoming Lavellan offering her arms at the front as a shelter. Without a doubting, not even for a second, he fell, this time not against a wall, nor alone, nor troubled by thoughts of isolation and abandonment. 

“Hey, come here”.

He let himself fall into an embrace that tasted like calm after the storm, and as a tear escaped from his depths, he understood that he, in the face of the uncertainty and impotence of the upcoming events and the dangers that threatened them, was no longer alone.


End file.
